In the past 14 years Ms Manolas said he had not only saved her life but helped keep her out of a nursing home.

But now it was time for him to retire.

He was left physically and emotionally damaged after an assault two years ago and was now starting to miss vital cues in Ms Manolas’ care.

“What he witnessed was horrifying in the extreme to him. Until then he thought all humans were his friend, the world a great place and he was brutally dragged away from me as I was choked unconscious,” Ms Manolas said.

“We survived, healed outwardly mostly, but there is no doubt he was affected by it, massively negatively impacted, and his mental health has been going downhill ever since, and as a result, so have his working abilities.”

Camera IconTiberius needs to retire.Picture: Supplied

Adding to Tiberius’ woes, Ms Manolas said parrots usually worked in pairs when used as service animals, but her clever parrot had been carrying the burden alone and was stressed and burnt out because she could not afford to buy another bird on a disability pension.

A friend of Ms Manolas has now set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money to buy a new parrot so that Tiberius can step back from his service duties and become a full time pet.

But not any bird will do. It needs to be intelligent enough for her to train.

The ideal bird for this, according to Ms Manolas, is a Hyacinth macaw which can sell for around $60,000, however she has set her sights on a more realistic Scarlet macaw which can sell for around $7000.

Ms Manolas said there were a diverse range of animals now being used as service animals, beyond the traditional canines, including snakes, horses, cats and rats.

“Any sufficiently close enough and bonded enough intelligent pet can do the job to a certain level, will monitor their human friends and try to communicate when something major is happening,” she said.

“To manage extremely specific, concentrated tasks it takes years of dedicated, constantly reinforced training that begins pretty much as soon as the animal in question is weaned.”